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Today's Opinions

In addition to electing a president, U.S. senator, members of Congress, the state legislature and county commissioners, it looks like we’re headed for another very busy ballot when we vote this November.

My name is Kris Tokarski; I am a jazz pianist based out of New Orleans who recently had the pleasure of performing at the Evergreen Jazz Festival with my trio. I wanted to relay a few words about my experience in an effort to spread the word about this annual weekend-long event.

It was the last train out of Paris during a summer of discontent. The Euro 2016 soccer championship — a temporary distraction from the impending Brexit vote — made the French capital the focal point of Europe as rail workers, taxi drivers, sanitation staff, air-traffic controllers and petrol workers took full advantage by declaring near-simultaneous labor strikes. The River Seine, in an apparent protest of her own, overflowed along the Quai d’Orsay as if attempting to wash away the gathering gloom.

I hope you enjoyed the Fourth of July. I guess I’m really getting old, because although the music at Buchanan Park was good, I missed the National Repertory Orchestra playing patriotic music. I did get my John Philip Sousa fix later watching the celebrations from Washington and Boston. If you are like I am, you still get a strong feeling of patriotism and pride in our nation on special days like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

The other day I was riding my bike on the road up Squaw Pass. On a straight stretch where I could see about a quarter mile in both directions, a big truck was barreling toward me from up ahead — a cement-mixer, which is one wide dude! When I checked my handlebar mirror, a car was fast approaching from behind, too.

It looked like these two vehicles might meet right where I was tooling along on my bike. No problem — not if the truck driver stays in his own lane, I shift over to the narrow shoulder, and the driver coming from behind has any sense.

Memorial Day is not celebrated by all nations; it is a U.S. holiday. It’s a day of remembrance (lest we forget) to honor those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice protecting the freedoms we all too often take for granted.

In Cambridge, England, however, not only is Memorial Day recognized, it is the most important day of the year at the American Cemetery and Memorial 3 miles outside the city center. This year, I had the privilege of attending their ceremony, surrounded by 8,939 names engraved in this garden of stone.

The 17th session of the Colorado General Assembly adjourned last week after a session that was long on partisan wrangling and relatively short on meaningful public policy achievements. As could have been expected in an election-year session when Democrats controlled the House by a 34-31 margin and Republicans had an 18-17 edge in the Senate, most bills that pursued a partisan agenda did not pass.